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Designing for the experience team: Improving the internal heuristic evaluation process of HP printers.
Enabling Hewlett-Packard (HP) employees to conduct expedited heuristic evaluations of printers, leading to more efficient identification of pain points in existing designs.
Disclaimer: due to an NDA, some key information has been blurred out and omitted. If you would like to hear more, please contact me!
Context
Inefficient heuristic evaluations were blocking the design process
With a 24.5% market share, HP is the global market leader for printers. To maintain this competitive position, the 40 members of the Setup and Onboarding Experience Team often conducted heuristic evaluations on printer models to identify existing pain points with HP printers and drive improvements in new models.
The current standard process for conducting heuristic evaluations was time-consuming, tedious, and challenging to derive insights from, resulting in prolonged task completion and frustration for the expert user.
Timeline
June 2023 - Sep 2024
Role
UX Design Intern
Team
3 UX Strategists
1 UX Researcher
Problem
A dependence on outdated spreadsheets
HP's standard method of conducting heuristic evaluations with spreadsheets proved inefficient in identifying areas needing improvement.
Evaluating the 500 touchpoints on this sheet was time-consuming and tedious, making it difficult to identify which ones were not satisfactorily fulfilled. Some touchpoints were also worded negatively, which required rephrasing for consistency. The long checklist and unclear setup hindered experts from achieving their goals efficiently.
Solution
Simplifying insight consolidation with an intuitive data entry system
Utilizing survey tools familiar to my target audience, I created surveys corresponding to different parts of the evaluation process. After the user rated each touch point and submitted the survey, Power Automate would automatically create a summary based on their responses giving the user a clearer picture of their evaluation.
Business Needs
How did this project align with HP’s business needs?
Utilizing survey tools familiar to my target audience, I created surveys corresponding to different parts of the evaluation process. After the user rated each touch point and submitted the survey, Power Automate would automatically create a summary based on their responses giving the user a clearer picture of their evaluation.
My solution’s impact on the business and users
67%
A user satisfaction poll showed a 67% increase in satisfaction with the process among 40 expert printer evaluators.
20 minutes
Each heuristic evaluation an expert conducted now took 20 fewer minutes to complete, saving several hours across 30 unique printer evaluations conducted monthly.
100,000 users
By simplifying the process for experts to identify pain points, experts were able to easily consolidate insights for small home and office printers used by 100,000 global users.
How did I accomplish this? Dig deeper into the process with me!
Problem Space
As an expert user, I struggled to complete a heuristic evaluation
To better understand the heuristic evaluation process before interviewing my target users, I conducted my first evaluation using the initial checklist. While unboxing and setting up the software and hardware for the printer, I also evaluated all the touch points on the heuristic evaluation spreadsheet.
It took nearly an hour to complete, and drafting the final presentation to present my findings took even longer as I had to revisit all 500 touchpoints to review my decisions on certain heuristics.
5 additional expert users validated my assumptions
To understand my target audience better, I interviewed 5 of my co-workers who had performed heuristic evaluations.
Some of the key questions I asked to collect qualitative insights are listed below.
| How often do you use your completed checklist to make a final report?
| Is there anything about the process you find tedious?
| How would you conduct a heuristic evaluation without the checklist?
Insights were determined from qualitative data
By sorting qualitative data and identifying common themes, I was able to combine my personal pain points with the pain points I discovered from the 5 additional users I interviewed and draw insights to drive the redesign process forward.
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General Insights: Users did not always complete setup and onboarding process in its entirety depending on their needs so many of the touchpoints became irrelevant and a hinderance if only completing a partial evaluation.
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Format Specific Insights: Users found the checklist to be too lengthy to be effective, tedious to navigate due to 10+ clicks to evaluate a single touchpoint, and found no immediate data summary after completion.
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Content Specific Insights: Users noted that touchpoints didn’t align with recent user research findings and that touchpoints were very redundant and outdated.
Understanding our user’s perspective during the application process
Now that we had determined what stakeholders needed to support their business, it was time to understand what the users were struggling with
To better understand the problems users were facing while going through the application, I led a discovery session where we noted potential pain points and instances of broken flows.
Structuring content
Ensuring clarity by improving touchpoint wording
In the original Excel sheet, several questions were phrased in a way that encouraged negative responses (no) instead of positive ones (yes). Additionally, many of the questions were leading and biased towards specific answers. I reviewed and adjusted them to ensure they meet the expected standards.
In addition to ensuring the touchpoints I was restructuring matched target experiences for our end users (HP printer owners), I went over the Modern Setup: Experience Study, a powerpoint from HP’s UX Research team that condensed all major key findings from the setup and onboarding process.
Standardizing target experiences to structure touchpoints
Users had expressed they sometimes only evaluated a certain part of the setup process such as the software setup. Thus, when filling out the 500 touchpoints on the Excel sheet, they had to specifically seek out the touchpoints relevant to the part of the process they were evaluating
By consulting with expert users, I was able to draw clear distinctions between the most common parts of the process and clearly defined what part of the process belonged to which section to avoid confusion.
Unboxing
Concerning packaging of printer, removal of printer from box, and sustainability
Learning Product
Concerning the setup manual accompanying the printer
Hardware Setup
Concerning the onboarding through the printer itself
Software Setup
After defining these sections, I worked closely with a UX Strategist to further understand target experiences for our end users (HP printer owners) and structure what the touchpoints in each section should cover.
Below is an example of how we set it up for the Hardware Setup portion to guide touchpoints in that section.
Solution Ideation
Utilizing familiar tools
At this point, I knew I needed to decide what tools would be the best for users to easily extract their information.
I identified the following 3 options:
While SmartSheets presented a viable option to structure touchpoints, I realized that only a select few people had access to SmartSheets making to inaccessible to many on the team. While Google presented a viable alternative I found Microsoft’s Power Automate’s features to be better to aid in information dissemination. The team was also very familiar with Microsoft Suite so they would not need to spend time learning how to use the tool.
User Testing and Iteration
Finding what made the most sense for users
Now that the content had been iterated and finalized, it was time to determine the format. I knew presenting both rating scale and yes/no questions would be frustrating as evidenced during user research, so I gathered 10 users and split them into two group to conduct A/B testing.
Pivoting based on user feedback
After discussing my progress with my manger, I realized the context in which these heuristic evaluation summaries were being used. Often times, these summaries were being inserted into reports submitted to higher ups. Instead of quantitative reports, I realized qualitative reports may be more useful.
❌
User A evaluated that 80% of the heuristics for the Learning Product were satisfied. 20% of the heuristics were not satisfied and require revision.
✅
User A did not think the signifiers of the handholds on the box are appropriate and these should be reevaluated, …
User A did think that the…
Application
Onboarding the team
When the tool was officially ready, I demonstrated the tool during an all-hands meeting. It was important they understood how it worked and the implications for their workflow. The tool was well-recieved by all 30 members of the team!
My demonstration showcased how rating touchpoints on Forms would translate to summaries automatically on an excel sheet that was emailed to their inbox after completing the survey.
Utilizing the tool in practice
This tool was immensely helpful because it allowed expert users to leverage the information to complete associated analysis faster. For instance, I used this tool to summarize and understand my findings during the setup and onboarding process before constructing a journey map for a printer I was evaluating.
Handing off for further improvements by team members
Printers are constantly evolving, especially at HP. I knew my work would not be up to date forever so I wanted to give future HP employees the resources to easily change the touchpoints. Therefore, I created this off boarding guide with detailed documentation about the step by step process.
Wrapping up
What I learned
Communication is key! Reaching out to experts of different knowledge areas regarding printers was instrumental in ensuring the checklist contained clear, concise and accurate information. Identifying needs of experts to determine problem areas was also very helpful in establishing direction and creating the final product.
Prioritization ensures productivity. While my main project is what I focused on during this case study, I had more responsibilities and mini-projects to complete on the side. Making sure to prioritize what needed to be completed first based on business needs, user needs and expert needs ensured my goals aligned with my team’s goals.
Reflecting on the experience
Overall, this internship was a very fun 12 week experience that quickly taught me to get comfortable with the uncomfortable. I didn’t know a whole lot about print design going in so learning on the job (and fast) was a crucial factor in my success. Throughout the process, I learned a lot not just about interaction design but also about project management, working on a cross-functional team with people across many different time zones and corporate company culture.